Kimbell Museum Opens in Ft. Worth

FORT WORTH, Oct. 4— The opening of the new Kimbell Art Museum, which this week has brought a large number of critics, col lectori, dealers and museum directors to a city that has held little professional inter est for them in the past, is an unusual event in two respects.

It is, first of all, a bold attempt to establish a, new museum devoted to the works of the old masters at a time when both the art and the money required to purchase it are hard to come by. But it is also an effort to uphold a high standard of esthetic excellence in the conception, and design of museum building. The latter is not quite so rare an ambi tion nowadays as the former, but in both respects this new museum is a remark able achievement.

Wide‐Ranging Collection

The collection that Richard F. Brown, the director of the museum, has assembled over a six‐year period, is very wide‐kanging. It includes a 13th‐century altar piece said to be the earliest surviving example of English panel painting, an early “Madonna and Child” by Giovanni Bellini, a Cycladic marble figure dating from 2000 B.C., and a cubist masterpiece— “Man With a Pipe” (1911)— by Picasso.

There are paintings by Rubens, Tintoretto, Hals, Turn er, Goya, Boucher, Redon, Monet, Vuillard, Munch and Matisse. The collection also includes works of Oriental and pre‐Columbian sculpture, as well as modern classics by Maillol and Bourdelle.

Perhaps the most astonish ing single work in the col lection consists of a series of wall paintings from the Chapel of St. Andre de Baga lance near Avignon in France. This work, dating from the mid‐12th century and origi nally executed as dry fresco on plaster, has been trans ferred to canvas and mounted on wood in the original di mensions of the apse for which it was designed. It is, in effect, a free‐standing architectural unit within the museum's own exhibition space.

In addition to Mr. Brown's acquisitions for the museum, the collection includes a number of paintings—most of them 18th‐bentury Eng lish portraits—from the es tate of the late Kay Kimbell, who established the Kimbell Art Foundation, which has now used its ample funds to open this new institution. Mr. Kimbell, whose fortune derived from the oil, grain, food and insurance indus tries, died in 1964. He was, reported to have headed more than 70 corporations at his death. The Kimbell. Art Foundation has been the beneficiary of his entire es tate since Mrs. Kimbell has also donated her own share of the estate to the founda tion.

There has clearly been no shortage of money, then, in assembling the museum col lection. There has been no lack of connoisseurship, either. Only a discriminating eye and an informed mind could have brought off this feat of putting together so catholic a collection of such real quality solely in the col lecting game. And there is no doubt that the eye and the mind are Mr. Brown's.

If the cellection is, never theless, extremely fragmen tary by its very nature, and if the quality of certain pictures—the Rubens, say, or the Matisse—is only suffi cient to remind us of their greater pictures elsewhere, still, this is more a reflection of the shortage of master works on the open market than of any deficiency of taste. And who knows? With some of our venerable mu seums now taking the atti tude that their so‐called “permanent” collections are simply a form of liquid as sets, to be turned into cash whenever the need arises, Mr. Brown and his associates in Fort Worth may soon be in a position to pick up more of the marbles than they at first anticipated.

Special Visual Quality

Beyond the collection, what the Kimbell Art Museum clearly represents is a dedi cation to high professional standards in the whole field of museology. Its library, its research facilities, its art con servation center, and the splendid scholarly catalogue of the collection itself all re flect this serious commitment. And nowhere is the commit ment more happily and beau tifully in evidence than in the building itself, which was designed by Louis I. Kahn of Philadelphia.

This is a highly original structure, built at a cost of $6,5‐million, composed of a series of concrete cycloid vaurts enclosing an area of 120,000 square feet. It is this cycloid, or semicircular, form that gives the building its special visual quality as well as its basic structural prin ciple.

By splitting the vaults to admit natural light from above, the architect has been able to provide both the ex hibition space and the prin cipal work areas with a won derfully warm, natural illu mination. At the same time, the vaulted structure gives the museum a highly flexible exhibition space that is un disturbed by piers, columns or windows. The result is an almost poetic atmosphere in which the museum visitor is always more or less aware of the changing quality of nat ural light without being dis tracted from the works of art it has been so ingeniously employed to illuminate.

Enhanced by Travertine

The general warmth of the building is enhanced by the use of Italian travertine, wood and mill‐finished stain less steel. The effect of these combining surfaces, softened by the changing light, is a composition of pewter tonali ties and earth colors. It is all very elegant, very com modious and, in the best sense, very functional. Mr. Kahn has given Fort Worth —and the museum world—a building that many will con sider his greatest achieve ment.

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A version of this archives appears in print on October 5, 1972, on Page 54 of the New York edition with the headline: Kimbell Museum Opens in Ft. Worth. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe